api-workshop

ACM workshop to construct a basic API. We will be providing support for Mac and Linux users only.

This API will have a basic endpoint of type /GET that will return a JSON of a list of books. This is a RESTful API.

To get started

Environment Set Up

Mac Users: In order to set up our environment, we need to make sure that you have Homebrew and XCode installed in your machine. Once that is done, you can use the brew command to install packages:

brew update
brew install curl

Lubuntu Users: The Debian/Ubuntu package manager is apt-get. Run the following commands to install the curl and build-essential packages.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl build-essential

Install Git

Mac Users:

brew update
brew install git

Lubuntu Users:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git

Configuring Git

You should always configure git and let it know who you are the first time you install it on a new machine. This way the commit log will always have proper author information.

git config --global user.name "First Last"
git config --global user.email "my@email.com"

git config --global push.default simple
git config --global core.autocrlf input

Explanation of the final two commands

git config --global push.default simple

This tells git to only push updates from your current branch up to remote repositories (like github). If you don't do this, then the original behavior could be to push all branches, even your experimental ones, up to remote repositories.

# mac/linux
git config --global core.autocrlf input

This setting deals with the end of lines (EOL) in your code files. For the best compatibility across platforms, it is best if Mac/Linux users set this to input.

NVM and Node

The best way to manage your Node.js installations is to use the NVM (Node Version Manager) tool. It allows you to have multiple versions of Node.js installed simultaneously and provides commands to easily switch between different versions.

# Mac users should run this command first
touch ~/.bash_profile

# Install nvm
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.2/install.sh | bash

# After nvm installs you should close your terminal and open a new one to access nvm

# Verify that nvm is working
nvm ls

# Install the LTS node.js version
nvm install 10.13.0

# Install another node.js version
nvm install 8.1.3

# You are now using version 8.1.3, to switch back to 10.13.0 run
nvm use 10.13.0

# Run the node repl (read-eval-print loop)
node

The node command runs the interpreter allowing you to run and evaluate JavaScript code. Exiting Node: Press ctrl+d

If the nvm command is not working for you on the Mac, then check this section for additional troubleshooting: https://github.com/creationix/nvm#install-script.

Tools to Test API

For the purposes of testing the API, we will be using Postman. Download the version corresponding to your machine.